With the recent attack by Hamas on Israel after decades of strife there, my mind drifted back to Northern Ireland. When I taught World Religions I always spent a class going into the background of the Israel Palestine conflict as many people’s understanding of both Judaism and Islam are impacted by that conflict. I would go back to the British days to help the students understand the foundation of the conflict. Inevitably the question of what to do about it would come up. And at that point I mentioned Northern Island and thought the point was made. But the blank stares of the class clued me in that my point went astray. It turns out most of the students were 2 year-olds when the Good Friday agreement was reached.
Furthermore, in my day to day conversations it seems like many who were adults when it was happening have forgotten both the Troubles and how it was resolved. Palestine is not Ireland so all the lessons will not apply. And it’s also been long enough ago that I studied the Troubles that I felt a refresher was in order for myself as well. So I recently bought McKittrick and McVea’s “Making Sense of the Troubles” as a refresher for myself.
My thought was that as I read it I’d share little bits of what I was picking out with the rest of you. With 12 chapters I would make it into 12 articles, or so. I may combine some or skip them if I don’t feel they are applicable elsewhere, but I’m still reading the book so we’ll find out together. I will not be drawing out specific references to Israel and Palestine myself but leave that to the reader and the comments. My bringing stuff up here is my saying I either see something of relevance or it’s critical to understanding the Troubles and we’d be lost without whatever it is being mentioned. There are also bits that are relevant to the current US political environment.
Today I’ll talk about Chapter One which deals with 1921-1963. The authors begin here because they have to begin somewhere. As many folks know there has been a long history of conflict in Ireland. Anglo-Normans began invading and seizing Irish land in the 12th century and all of Ireland was taken by Britain by the 17th century. But it was in 1921 that the end of the Irish War of Independence brought in an Independent Ireland in most of the country, but the 6 counties in the Northeast remained under British rule. Northern Ireland was under Britain but had their own parliament.
This division happened because while most of Ireland was Catholic, the 6 counties split off to form Northern Island were predominantly Protestant. This split happened with the express purpose to protect those Protestants from becoming an oppressed minority. But in the process of protecting Protestants, they carved out a state where two-thirds of the population was Protestant and one third was Catholic.
I’m going to pause here and point out to Daily Kos’s rabid anti-religion folks that while Catholic and Protestant are the identifiers used here, very little to none of the conflict had any root in actual church doctrine or beliefs. Rather the terms Catholic and Protestant are essentially the more common terms for “Nationalist” and “Unionist”. The Catholics were the nationalists because they favored Northern Ireland being a part of Independent Ireland and the Unionists favored remaining in union with the United Kingdom.
The religious division was less about religion and more about those of Catholic faith having been mostly part of the original inhabitants of Ireland and those of Protestant faith were mostly the descendants of English immigrants and occupiers having moved to Ireland as a means of maintaining British control over the island. The split between religion was not about religious principle but about being a short-hand identifier of whose family came from where, possibly centuries in the past. Religion was not the cause here so much as it was an identifier. If someone knows of a theological position driving the Troubles I would love to hear about it, but I’ve never come across one. I will use Nationalist (C) and Unionist (P) mostly because Nationalist and Unionist are not what the groups were commonly known by in the United States where much of the Daily Kos readership is from. My apologies for using a US-centric lens but many readers will be lost without the initials connecting to the religious identifiers. Blame the MSM for enshrining the conflict in terms of religion.
When Northern Ireland was created it started with proportional representation (PR) similar in some ways to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the United States making sure that minorities have the potential to have representation in the government (Though PR obviously predates the Voting Rights act). When Northern Ireland was created, this resulted in 13 of 24 local councils being controlled by the Nationalists (C). However, because of the Unionist’s (P) sizable majority in the Parliament, the Union party ended PR in 1922. They then gerrymandered the heck out of the entire voting structure to the point where 27 out of 52 seats in a latter election didn’t even have a non-Unionist running. Two thirds or better majorities were standard from there on out.
This severe gerrymander permanently enshrined Unionist (P) rule with no democratic means for the Nationalists (C) to overturn it. The Unionists justified this disenfranchisement to themselves by saying that:
I was consulted by Sir James Craig at the time it was done. Craig thought that the fate of our constitution was on a knife edge at the time and that, in the circumstances, it was defensible on the basis that the safety of the State is the supreme law. It was most clearly understood that the arrangement was to be a temporary measure — five years was mention. (Page 9)
The Parliament of the United Kingdom had the power to intercede but chose not to. From their perspective the arrangement made the problem no longer theirs and they could ignore Ireland for a time. The UK House of Commons established a convention “prohibiting parliamentary questions of debates on matters within the Belfast parliament’s jurisdiction.” Essentially, so long as it didn’t cause trouble for London, the Unionists (P) could do whatever they wished in Northern Ireland.
The control of the Unionists (P) in Parliament then proceeded to further that control elsewhere. Almost all Judges were Unionists, including many former leaders of the party. The police force was 90% Protestant (versus 66% of the population). The police answered directly to the Unionist (P) ministers and had no independence. This police force was militarized and meant to intimidate. Only 10% of the civil service was Catholic, and there were no Catholics in the 55 most senior civil service positions. The discrimination extended to industry and private companies. Housing, due to owners having votes in certain matters, became highly discriminatory as who got to live where had political ramifications.
Don’t wear Orange on St. Patricks day in the US
An aside from the book real quick, when I lived in Boston there was a new person at work who had just moved in from another country. It happened to be near St Patrick’s Day so I suggested he head down to Southy and be sure to wear lots of Orange. Not wanting him to be severely beaten, I quickly stated I was joking and that under no circumstance he should do so. That green vs orange comes from the Orange Order.
The Orange Order, a Protestant organization viewed by Catholics as bigoted and anti-Catholic but regarded by most Protestants as an important guardian of their heritage, held an important place in political life. The Unionist community contained in its ranks people who differed widely in terms of class, outlook and geography. While Catholics had only one church, Protestants were splintered into dozens of denominations, large and small, from high-church Anglicans to Presbyterians with a history of independence and dissent. The Orange Order played a key role in providing the political cement to hold them all together. (Page 13)
The Orange Order became the bigoted focal point of anti-Catholic hatred. Membership in it was essential to promotion in many fields. And Orange “Marching season” parades were held to reinforce the Unionist supremacy. Religion was used to decide whose side you were on, but there were no religious principles involved. It was strict in-group out-group tribalism. For example a Unionist minister Basil Brooke stated:
Many in the audience employ Catholics, but I have not one about my place. Catholics are out to destroy Ulster with all their might and power. They want to nullify the Protestant vote and take all they can out of Ulster, and then see it go to hell. (Page 15)
Such a statement has no statement of religion or principle other than to hate one group based on their chosen (or inherited) religion. There is only religion as identification. And the communities remained separate due to that identification. A latter Catholic Observer in the 1970s said:
If there is one thing which I have learned in my 30-40 odd years as a community social worker it is this: that, broadly speaking, two communities have lived side by side in Northern Ireland without really knowing each other, or without making any real honest, sincere and conscious effort to bridge the communications gap.
Independent Ireland was of little help to the Nationalists (C) in Northern Ireland. Instead of actively supporting nationalists (C) in Northern Ireland, they were frequently dismissive of Northern Ireland politicians and sidelined them as much as possible. This seemed to be due primarily to Ireland having no real ability to influence events in Northern Ireland and the conflict there constantly serving only as an unwelcome distraction. The nationalists (C) were on their own. Irish politicians certainly supported a unified Ireland in theory but had no concrete proposals to deal with actual problems.
The suggested remedy [by the politicians in Independent Ireland] was simplistic in the extreme: London, which had created partition and the border, was simply to announce plans to withdraw and thus bring about a united Ireland. This was clearly more of a slogan than a policy, in that it took no account of the likely Unionist reaction to such a move. The rights of Unionists, or the potential they had for resisting such a move, were barely contemplated. Irish nationalism became even fuzzier when the future of Unionists was concerned. It was sometimes suggested that many Protestants would withdraw with the British, returning to the English and Scottish homelands vacated centuries earlier by their ancestors.
An interesting side note before I go, apparently the Churchill government approached Dublin in 1940 offering up Northern Ireland in exchange for Irish help versus Germany. Northern Ireland Unionists (P) were appalled and managed to sink the deal before things got started. In 1948 Ireland fully left the Commonwealth anyway to become a full Republic.
Next time will be chapter 2 “The O’Neill years 1963-69”